Greedy Goblin

Friday, July 1, 2011

Don't panic!

People swarm to new lands like lemmings. The /2 is full of "LFM Firelands trash run". Many guilds started early, fighting with bugs to do be among the first to get the new shinies.

We are raiding of course, but not more than usually. There is simple no point rushing. Firelands, the Mark of the World Tree and all other content are staying here for months. Unless you are in a competitive world top guild, skipping even weeks wouldn't matter. Of course I'm not suggesting to purposefully skip something you'd like to do.

On the opposite: do as you wish, stick to your own schedule, don't start to panic and "Oh my God I forgot the dailies with my alt and I must run 2 more troll HCs or I won't cap my Valor and Tol Barad is coming and I need honor points to replace that last Bloodthirsty Gladiator piece to vicious and my auctions are expried and I'm out of eternal fire and and and.... ".

Look at your gear, progress, gold. Would it be significantly better if you would act like a crazed mouse when Cataclysm started? Remember how laid back you played in the last month. It will be the same 3 months from now. You - just like the guy who got a week holiday with canned food and the guy who was away for a week - will be exalted with Avengers of Hyjal, nearly full 378 with some HC pieces, unlocked all mark vendors and sitting on a pile of gold you can't spend.

Again: HC raiders who do 7/7 this week and 3/7 HM next are different. But they are different in skill, not time. No matter how many of your alts do the dailies, you won't get more progressed in hard modes.

It sound like and invitation for slacking, but actually working in your own pace is more effective than rushing. Less well done tasks pay better than more messed up. Rushing even in a trash farm doesn't provide anything else than repair bills. Plan, think, always remember the meaning of life: 42!

 PS: we are currently on Beth'litac, 33%, she'll be down today, with the people who happen to be online.

11 comments:

Anonymous said...

"Many guilds started early, fighting with bugs to do be among the first to get the new shinies."

Actually it's been pretty bug free. We've only killed 3 bosses, but among those there have been no issues. Servers have been stable, boss mechanics seem to work as intended etc. The only thing that got changed was Face Rage and I don't think it was that broken to begin with.

So I'd say Blizz did a good job on this and there's no need to put off raiding in the fear of bugs. No rush of course, but no need to delay on purpose either - the encounters are fine.

Anonymous said...

That is not as true for crafting. For example, i suspect a lot (majority?) of profit (sales - mats) especially for non-cooldown items like the engineering scope, will occur in the first five days.

There is a gold advantage to unlocking the recipes on the first day. But the raid bosses will always be there; and when 4.3 ships they probably will be 20% easier to kill.

Anonymous said...

This is general advice. If you do your best and fail, you still did well. You did what you could, it doesn't make you a slacker. Equally, we might call people slacker when they aren't. We can judge, but if we don't know person's goals, we judge too quickly (even though we may be correct).

Knowing the boss fights well (see videos, read tactics, exercise. Use dungeon Journal!), and knowing your class & role's rotation well, will yield better result than a little bit better gear. If you are still in 4.0 blues though, the upgrades can have major impact. If you are short on time, study the fights, and check if EJ has important updates on your class/role.

A Taiwanese guild which have killed Shennox HC world first by doing a guild-wide faction change. Exploiting the 3 AM/4 AM quest reset bug (which was already existing in 4.0 in TB, and before that too) can be seen as gaining unfair advantage. To exploit it, you must do 2 (+ 1 chain) daily quests between 3 and 4 AM. The extra you gain is 4 tokens. Good luck fiddling that into your daily life schedule, and you risk an infraction on your account by exploiting this.

The boss encounters might be bug-free (yeah right) but addons need updates. I had some severe bugs in addons, had to disable some. Server-side: hot-fixes have already applied to realms and instances. Casting levitate (and slow fall) on someone in BG makes them currently DC. A severe bug.

The reason people should do Firelands (FL) is different than reputation. Reputation is a nice gimmick. The gem lies in the BoE drops, the recipes, and the new primordial saronite (living ember). Insane profits can be made, in the form of thousands of gold.

Anonymous said...

Was bug free at least until tonight for my guild. Beth'tilac was DCing anyone that came down from the web, and the trash pack of the little elementals never get ignited so you just have to DPS through their damage reduction. Other than that though, I'm pretty impressed with how smoothly this patch has gone.

Jesus said...

42 is not the meaning of life. 42 is the answer to the yet unknown Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything.

Camiel said...

I spent my game time yesterday on leveling my blacksmithing skill a couple of levels on a lvl 38 alt...

OK, I did get the 365 cape for my main first.

Grim said...

I acted like a crazed mouse at the start of Cata and that allowed me to sell a few (like 3 or 4, i think) crafted epics for ridiculous prices and that supplied me with gold for most of the last tier.

I have to do that again now - I have to be the first to get those recipes and make some stupidly overpriced sales, or I will have to do boring stuff, like farming all the dailies I can find, gathering materials, or, god forbid, playing the AH.

Grim said...

@Jesus
The question is well known: "What's 6 times 7?"
Though that's probably not the original question, but the result of some meddling from time travelers. Read the rest of the books for details.

Hiso said...

We had problems with dcs in the Fireland Raid on a German Server. Getting the english client fixed it.

We managed to kill Beth'tilac(25) even though she always had 100% life in phase 2. But we were overdue in Raid Time. (15m)

We were not overgeared, had 4 hc kills in the content before but had to take people not in our guild and trials, with us.

Imakulata said...

Grim, the question actually was "What's 6 times 9?"

Anonymous said...

"Again: HC raiders who do 7/7 this week and 3/7 HM next are different. But they are different in skill, not time. No matter how many of your alts do the dailies, you won't get more progressed in hard modes."

As someone who played in Enigma(world first normal mode Ragnaros kill - cleared Firelands normal on the first night it was open) during the T11 grind, I can tell you this is a false assumption. They are skilled, certainly, but the reason guilds like those get hardmodes done fast is because they are willing to literally wipe 40 or 50 times in one raid night even when no visible progress is being made. We took over 120 attempts on Omnitron HC and at least 70 of those attempts we didn't get past 60%.

Paragon admitted that they wiped 500 times on Ragnarnos HC to claim the world first.

Having played in other guilds ranked ~500 world, their players weren't any less skilled players than Enigma's guys, they just raided 10 hours per week, hard limit.